Do I need to pay for accurate forecasts?

Not for standard 7-day forecasts. Open-Meteo uses ECMWF (the gold standard numerical model) on the free tier. Accuracy degrades for hyperlocal nowcasting and beyond 7 days regardless of what you pay, because that's a fundamental limit of atmospheric modelling. For hyperlocal rain prediction (the 'will it rain in the next hour at my exact location?' use case), there is no reliable free option.

Why is my favourite weather API not on this list?

We track 15 weather APIs on FreeAPI.watch. If an API isn't listed, it's either because it doesn't offer a genuinely free tier (credit card required, or only a trial), it's been discontinued (see /graveyard), or we haven't added it yet. You can suggest additions via /contact.

Best Free Weather APIs in 2026: A Data-Driven Comparison

Q: Which free weather API has the most generous limits?

Open-Meteo gives you 10,000 calls/day with no key, no credit card, and no rate throttling within that budget. WeatherAPI.com offers 1,000,000 calls/month on the free tier, but requires a key. For pure volume, WeatherAPI wins on paper; for zero-friction integration, Open-Meteo wins.

April 5, 2026 · weather

We monitor 15 free weather APIs hourly. Here's which ones are actually reliable, fast, and free-without-friction in 2026.

Open-Meteo is the best free weather API for most use cases in 2026: 10,000 calls/day, no key, clean JSON, ECMWF model data. If you need a key-based API with higher conceptual limits, WeatherAPI.com's 1,000,000 calls/month free tier is the runner-up.

We monitor 15 weather APIs from our infrastructure, pinging each one hourly with a real HTTP request to a production endpoint. Here's what the data shows.

The No-Key APIs (Free-Tier Score: 1.0)

Five weather APIs in our seed require no key at all: Open-Meteo, 7Timer!, Bright Sky (DWD), NOAA National Weather Service, and MET Norway. These are the only ones I'd call 'truly free' — no signup form stands between you and the first request.

Open-Meteo (10,000 calls/day) is the clear winner here. It uses the ECMWF ensemble model for global coverage and supports parameters like `temperature_2m`, `precipitation`, `windspeed_10m`, `weathercode`, and hourly data in a single request. The response includes both `current` and `hourly` keys — more on this in our tutorial at /tutorial/open-meteo.

MET Norway (Norwegian Meteorological Institute) is technically unlimited and covers global locations, but requires a User-Agent header and enforces a soft rate limit of around 20 requests/second. Their data is solid for Nordic locations where local model data is superior.

Bright Sky wraps German Weather Service (DWD) data — excellent for Germany, limited outside it. NOAA covers the US with no key and no stated rate limit, making it the best option for US-focused applications.

7Timer! is the outlier: it uses NOAA GFS model data and returns XML by default (JSON is available). It's genuinely unlimited and has been running since 2006, but the API design is dated.

Key-Required APIs (Free-Tier Score: 0.7)

WeatherAPI.com offers 1,000,000 calls/month on the free tier — by far the largest nominal volume. The catch: you need to sign up for a key (no credit card required). Their data includes current conditions, 3-day forecasts on the free plan, marine data, and astronomy data.

OpenWeatherMap is the most widely known: 1,000 calls/day free, key required. The data quality is solid for current conditions and 5-day forecasts. Their One Call 3.0 product allows 1,000 free calls/day but bills $0.0015/call above that — read the pricing page carefully before scaling.

Tomorrow.io (formerly ClimaCell) is interesting for the hyperlocal use case: 500 calls/day free, 25 saved locations. Their proprietary AI model processes satellite, radar, and station data to produce 'microweather' at street level. The free tier is genuinely usable for small projects.

Visual Crossing (1,000 records/day) stands out for historical data: 40+ years of history accessible on the free plan, which most competitors lock behind paid tiers. If your application needs historical comparisons, it's the best free option.

Weatherstack (100 calls/month) and AccuWeather (50 calls/day) have the most restrictive free tiers — not usable for anything beyond evaluation.

Compare: Open-Meteo vs OpenWeatherMap

For a side-by-side breakdown, see /compare/open-meteo-vs-openweathermap. The short version: Open-Meteo wins on free-tier accessibility (no key), call volume (10,000/day vs 1,000/day), and model quality for medium-range forecasts. OpenWeatherMap wins on ecosystem familiarity — more tutorials, SDKs, and community support.

For the weather category overall, see /category/weather for the live-ranked list based on our hourly monitoring.

What the Monitoring Data Shows

Our hourly pings hit a production-equivalent endpoint for each API. Open-Meteo and NOAA consistently respond under 200ms. MET Norway adds latency for non-Nordic locations (we test from a US-based origin) — typically 400–600ms for queries outside Europe.

WeatherAPI.com and OpenWeatherMap both show excellent uptime (>99.5% in our data) but higher variance in response time, likely due to rate-limit queuing during peak hours. The NOAA API occasionally returns 503 for points that haven't been recently queried — the first request to a new grid point can take 3–4 seconds while it computes the forecast zone.

The dead entries — MetaWeather (404 since 2022), Dark Sky (shutdown 2023) — are documented at /graveyard.